Tag Archives: fighting games

This report covered the event I help run for CouchWarriors, Battle Arena Melbourne. It was a big success, with higher prereg and the biggest attendance of all fighting game events for the last two years. The full text of the report is below.

One of the largest national Fighting game events, Battle Arena Melbourne, saw hundreds of players converge to compete in more than 10 games for the iconic BAM boxing glove trophy and over 10,000 in cash and prizes.

As the first Australian event in the Capcom Pro Tour, competition was fierce, but community minded organisers Couchwarriors also catered for new players with a Free to enter New Challengers tournament. Pleasing the crowd with impressive skills, the final between Anzel and Shoki saw Anzel walking away with his very own BAM exclusive arcade stick. It featured art by special guest, Jeffrey “Chamba” Cruz of Udon comics fame. (Official Street Fighter comic artist.)

Another special guest was Mick Gordon, sound designer and composer oF Killer Instinct. He shared insights on the game’s development, and even stuck around to play casuals with the players. In an amazing final, the KI winner was Darth Wishh in his very first tournament.

Among the other winners, we saw Sydney’s Myke reclaim the Virtua Fighter throne from two time winner AlexMD, while Tones went back to back in Dead Or Alive 5 Ultimate, Melbourne mainstay Rame took out Tekken Tag Tournament 2, a close Adelaide-Sydney Final saw n-megabytes dominate Injustice and in an amazing skills showcase, Brisbane’s Baxter took first place in both King oF Fighters 13 AND Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3.

There was a huge crowd For Smash Bros across Brawl, Melee and the custom Project M. The amazing growth in the Smash community saw over 70 people compete just in Melee singles with Dekar walking out the champion.

Finally, vying for a trip to Singapore to compete in the South East Asia Majors, the final oF the 80-player Street Fighter 4 event was SL|Sol over DB|Toxy, who had won the 3rd strike tournament earlier. His beast mode Akuma wasn’t enough to overcome Sol’s Cammy to take out the top prize at the 6th Annual event.

My latest esports news report for Good Game (see more about my reporting for GG here) finally allows me to report on my favourite scene, fighting games. Shadowloo Showdown (12-13 Oct 2013) is a great event, the second Melbourne major (see BAM) and one that the Shadowlogic team have worked hard to build as an international event. While BAM (Battle Arena Melbourne) and OHN (Ozhadou Nationals – Sydney) are majors that focus on Australian champions and interstate rivalries, SS centres on inviting players from overseas.

It’s a great way to expose local players to high level play – bring the internationals here. The latest SS took place in a beautiful new venue at the Flemington Racecourse. The lineup of guests was more modest than last year, but I expect that’s a positive to keep things more manageable. Being an organiser in the scene, I applaud this, and think that’s definitely a positive for the SS team.

Super Smash Bros
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Local team Dekar and Redact took out Melee, while in Brawl, Canadian entry Tinman, used an unusual character Olimar, cleverly outplaying and overwhelming opponents in a barrage of attacks.

King of Fighters 13 (KOF13)
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1st Xian (SG)
2nd Tokido (JP)
3rd Luffy (FR) (pronounced Louffy)
The last Aussies were knocked out in the early part of the top 8 Falco and Colonov as a stacked international bracket that saw top players Xian (Singapore) and Tokido (Japan) fight it out, This years Evo Street Fighter champ Xian took the crown.

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 (UMVC3 or just “Marvel”)
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Abegen (Japan) was a crowd favorite fighting through losers bracket with an unusual team of Tron, Thor and an incredible She-Hulk with heartstopping, crowd pleasing solo comebacks, but it wasn’t enough as Xian took out his second tournament win.

In the Grand Final Gamerbee, famously an Adon player, ran with Yun as his counter to Tokido’s Akuma which proved its value as a hard fought battle saw him win the first match and reset the bracket.
Yet the charismatic Tokido adjusted to impose a convincing win in the last set to finally win Shadowloo Showdown after four years of visits to Australian shores.